“Mr. Connolly, so nice to see you,” she said, and stood.
“Mrs. Latham,” he acknowledged. “I’m very glad you’ve hired security for Sam’s room.”
She nodded, studying him. “Sam really was targeted by some madman, wasn’t he?” she asked, worry evident in both her tone and her eyes.
“We don’t know that for sure, but it’s best to assume the worst and take precautions.”
“I admit I’m terrified now.”
“Just be careful and smart, Mrs. Latham.”
She smiled warmly. “Dorothy, please.”
“Dorothy,” he repeated. “And I’m just Joe.”
“Thank you, Joe,” she said.
Even as she spoke, the machine monitoring Sam’s vital signs began to beep shrilly.
“Oh, my God!” Dorothy gasped.
Joe frowned, staring at the IV leading into Sam’s arm. “Who’s been in here?” he demanded.
“No one but one of the nurses a few minutes ago,” she said.
He didn’t hesitate. Maybe he should have. But he didn’t.
He strode toward the man in the bed and ripped the IV from his arm.
CHAPTER 12
In Jared Bigelow’s penthouse on Park Avenue, Mary Vincenzo watched the news as it unfolded.
She had just come in, and this was the first time she was seeing everything that was being plastered all over the news.
And plastered it was.
She was watching coverage of an interview with a police spokesman on one of the major networks, but she could see reporters for the other networks and at least half a dozen cable channels in the background.
On the channel she had randomly chosen, a handsome man with a lean build and silver-white hair was solemnly comparing Lori Star’s murder to the one it had clearly been intended to emulate, that of Mary Rogers, so many years ago.
Mary Rogers. A woman with her own name. She couldn’t help finding something creepy about the coincidence. The newsman kept using the name as he spoke, and it gave her the shivers.
She wondered why it bothered her so much. After all, the girl who had just died was named Lori.
Watching, she shook her head. She could visualize the girl who had been killed, remembering her from when she had been on the news after the accident on the FDR. What an idiot she’d been to talk so publicly about what she knew. Of course, that was in retrospect. When Lori Star had gone to the news stations, she had surely never imagined herself as the next victim.
Mary watched, drawn like a moth to a flame. Had Lori’s death been the work of the same killer who’d murdered Thorne? True, there had been an identical note, but the police weren’t saying whether they were convinced that the same perpetrator was responsible. Someone might have had it in for Lori and then decided to blame it on the Poe Killer to throw off suspicion.
Behind her, Jared Bigelow sniffed. “Psychic actress, my ass,” he said.
“Jared!” she snapped.
“What?”
“The girl is dead.”
“So? That doesn’t automatically turn her into a saint.”
“Have some respect. She was murdered.”
“And now she’s dead and at peace—which she didn’t need to be. She talked a ton of trash, hogging the limelight, after that accident,” Jared said.
Mary turned to him, troubled. “Jared, that’s horrible. It sounds like you’re saying she asked for what happened to her.”
“Your words, not mine,” he said.
She shivered, hugging her arms around her.
“Oh, my dear Miss Mary,” he said, using the nickname he had long ago given her. He walked over and sat down at her side, slipping his arms around her. “She was trash, Mary. Pure trash.”
“But, Jared…”
“You’re with me. You’ll always be safe,” he promised her.
She looked at him. He was the only child and sole heir of a wealthy man. He was intelligent, courteous and extremely handsome in his slightly long-haired, artistic way. He’d been given every earthly possession he had ever wanted. And despite all his advantages, he could be petulant, with a tendency to pout like a two-year-old.
She was just five years his senior.
She had started to fall in love with him when he’d been just seventeen. But her husband had been alive then, a man who had demanded all her attention. He’d been quite a bit older than she was, and rich. Very rich. A man with a family fortune and no children.
She hadn’t been a bad wife. She’d been a faithful while he’d been alive, grateful for all the doors the Bigelow money had opened for her. She’d never had to work, unlike her sister back home in Iowa, who had grown old fast, serving hash and hamburgers at a roadside diner.
She had been grateful for her marriage, and if she’d dreamed of younger men and attending trendier clubs, well, she had limited herself to dreaming. She had made herself be a good wife.
Then he died of a heart attack. And the ironic thing—a truth somehow kept out of the papers—was that he had died in the arms of a younger woman. She’d almost found it amusing. She’d been as true as the pure white snow, while he had gone after a younger lover.